An AliveCor app turns an iPhone into an ECG, like Bones’ tricorder from “Star Trek.” (
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Your iPhone now tells you when it’s time to visit the doctor. Soon it could save you the trip.

In 2013, the biggest revolution in medicine will be in the palm of your hands, as smartphones are reconfigured to turn into mini doctors’ offices and medical labs. This is the year your Android measures your blood sugar, your iPhone becomes an ECG machine and the hardware we keep in our purses and pockets diagnose everything from ear infections to cancer.

Whether this sounds like a hypochondriac’s biggest coup or science fiction come true depends on your perspective. Either way, with the focus in medicine set on increasing access and lowering costs, smartphone-based medical devices offer some tremendous advantages.

“We are on the threshold of exceptional devices that will make management better and make outcomes better,” said Dr. Kris Iyer, executive medical director of the Allen Diabetes Center at Hoag Hospital in California.

Among the most promising are smartphone-based devices aimed giving patients more control over their health-care decisions — particularly in the area of self-triage.

Tricorder: With the marketing pitch “Sending Your Smartphone to Med School,” the Scanadu tricorder (yes, “Star Trek” fans, tricorder) promises to put a mini doctor’s office in the palm of everyone on the planet.

Using an electromagnetic pulse, the tricorder would measure vital statistics such as lung function, blood pressure and heart rate, as well as analyze rashes and infections and process blood, urine and saliva samples (on disposable cartridges). It would then instantly send the information to your smartphone which would then offer a diagnosis and advice (“Siri, am I dying?”) — and even book a doctor’s visit if necessary.

CEO and futurist Walter De Brouwer founded Scanadu out of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., in 2011, after a medical episode with his son illuminated for him how little most of us know about our own health.

“The thermometer, introduced in the 1800s, was the last great tool to revolutionize home health care,” De Brouwer told reporters. “Consumers don’t have the tools they need to monitor their health and make informed decisions about when they’re actually sick.”

The company expects the tricorder to hit the markets in 2013, and it’s hardly the only tricorder in development. The San Diego-based Qualcomm Foundation is hosting a Tricorder X Prize, a $10 million global competition to make handheld, reliable health diagnoses available directly to consumers. So far more than 230 teams have applied to vie for the prize.

Artificial pancreas: The University of Virginia has taken the smartphones-as-doctors a step further: turning an Android into an external organ.

The UVA School of Medicine will this year begin outpatient clinical trials for an “artificial pancreas,” a cellphone based device that works like the real thing, automatically monitoring blood-sugar levels and providing insulin as needed to patients with Type 1 diabetes.

Created by a team led by Patrick Keith-Hynes and Boris Kovatchev, the handheld device was devised by reconfiguring a standard Android.

“A control algorithm running on a cellphone takes over the insulin dosing for a patient,” said Kovatchev, director of the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology. “Finger sticks to get reference blood sugars are still not completely eliminated yet because the sensor needs occasional calibration, but the patient is free from frequent monitoring and computing insulin doses.”

Early tests done in Europe have shown promising results, and researchers are excited to test the cellphone “organ” in a real-world setting in the US. Overall, Kovatchev is bullish about where smartphones can take medicine in the future.

“A lot of advisory and control functions, ranging from real-time advice and help to dosing of medication, are upcoming,” he said.

Developed by Mobisante, the MobiUS SP1 received FDA approval in 2011 for use by medical professionals who are drawn to the device’s portability and price. The ultrasound attachment costs only $7,495. While the images, which appear on the phone’s screen, aren’t the highest quality available, they compare favorably to their top-of-the-line $100,000 brethren.

Heart monitor: Instead of pouring your heart into your phone, let your phone reveal your heart to you. San Francisco-based AliveCor developed electrodes that snap into the back of an iPhone and can perform an electrocardiogram (ECG).

The FDA has currently only cleared the sale of the $199 iPhoneECG to licensed medical doctors, but the company is hoping to make them available to patients over the counter in 2013.

A prototype was recently used to assess an airplane passenger suffering from chest pain; the cardiologist with the fancy iPhone realized the passenger was having a heart attack, and the pilot was forced to land the plane.

“I never thought of using it at 30,000 feet,” said Scripps cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol, who had been testing out the iPhone case. “If the device were commercially available, the patient might have been able to provide the data himself.”